Page 34 of The Kiss Principle

“I expected something a little more interesting after those booty shorts I saw you in.”

A groan escaped me that had nothing to do with the massage. The night Igz had been sick. The night I’d panicked about her breathing and rushed out of the house in those stupid, cock-strangling shorts. I had been trying to forget about that. I’d definitely been hoping Zé had forgotten about that.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was inappropriate.”

I shook my head, but it probably didn’t look like much with me melted into a puddle on the bed.

“How’s your back?”

My back, I thought, is definitely not the problem. But all I said was, “Good,” and I could hear myself from a long way off, how I sounded, like I was drunk on his touches.

But all Zé did was rub my back again, a caress this time instead of a massage, and it felt like long moments passed before he whispered, “Good.”

He shifted his weight. The mattress sank. My body, pulled by gravity, moved fractionally. And my dick, hard as fucking steel, touched his knee.

My personal hell lasted for approximately an eternity.

And then Zé got to his feet, the movement awkward because of his bad knee. We made eye contact (which is always, under every circumstance, a terrible fucking decision), and he gave mea weird, waffling smile with a bug-eyed level of freaked-the-fuck-out-ness. With exaggerated slowness, he picked up the bottle of massage oil, put it down again, grabbed a second towel, dried his hands. He still had that awful smile on his face. He straightened his tee. He looked around the room. I looked around the room too. It wasn’t a mess, but it was—well, I was suddenly ashamed that it was drab and dusty and had an echoing emptiness. Although, of course, that was secondary under the topcoat of panicking humiliation. All in all, I thought it would be nice if somebody would shoot me in the head.

“Well,” he said.

“Uh, thanks.”

“Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh—” He seemed to catch himself. “Yup.”

Yup, I thought. Where was a home intruder when you needed one?

We stared at each other. Fucking eye contact again.

“Let me get you some water,” Zé finally said.

“No!” It came out more sharply than I intended. “No, I’m good. I feel so relaxed, I’m going to go to sleep.” I smiled, and I thought I probably looked like I was insane. “My back feels great.”

“You need to drink some water, Fernando.”

“I’ll drink some, I promise.” And then I thought I should say sorry, but then I thought an apology would only make it so much worse. Maybe Hallmark made cards that said,Sorry about my raging accidental erection. “And then I’ll go straight to sleep.”

He twisted the second towel in his hands. His eyes still looked a little wider than usual, and his lips were parted, and it took me longer than it should have to realize that he was genuinely freaked out—and, worse, that he didn’t know what to do.

“Zé,” I said.

He started.

“Thank you.”

He let the towel hang from one hand. “Fernando—”

“I’m going to call it a night.”

“Right. Right, gotcha. Okay. Your back?”

“My back is fine. Thank you again.”

“Good.” He smiled, and it was his real smile, slow and sweet. “I’m glad, Fernando.”

“Goodnight.”

“Night.”

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